Twitter, one of the most high-profile social media tools, has the potential to launch your business from obscurity to high visibility. Users often prefer to follow a business rather than join a Facebook page, since it is easier to manage.

Once someone has followed your company, that essentially means that they want to hear more from you and are open to both content and marketing messages.

Here are a few tips to getting more followers and increasing customer loyalty once you have those followers:

What Your Users Want to Hear About

All that truly matters is the quality of your content. To succeed, you need to ask yourself what your users want to hear. For example, followers of a local restaurant chain might be interested in the daily special or in special discounts. On the other hand, followers of online personalities and bloggers might want witty lines on news or quick tips on whatever topic they are writing about. Each market and each customer base has different expectations about what they will receive. Make sure you are tweeting out the kind of content that people want to hear. Do this and followers will stay followers, read your tweets and pass your tweets along to their friends.

The Dialogue versus The Monologue

A lot of businesses make the mistake of “talking at” their customers through Twitter. While this may work for some, it is not nearly as effective as having a two-way conversation with your followers. Ask your followers a question and have them respond. Welcome @replies and respond to direct messages. In short, use Twitter to host a conversation rather than just tweet out one way.

Competitive Spying

To dominate your market, you need to know it well. One of the best ways to know your market is to follow all your competitors on Twitter. Determine how your competitors are using Twitter, whether they are they having more success than you, whether they have more user engagement than you, what kind of promotions they are doing, if they are using contests or coupons, and what kind of “vibe” they have.

Knowing what your competitors are doing gives you a huge advantage. By keeping track of them, you can learn from their successes and avoid their failures. You may even be able to steal some of their followers by participating in their conversations.

It’s basic but powerful: In order to dominate your market, you need to give your users what they truly want, consistently. Aim to be in conversation with your followers rather than just having a one-way monologue. Finally, follow your competitors’ every move and aim to always be two steps ahead.

Twitter is a relatively new social media, yet it is already becoming increasingly important to have a well thought-out Twitter strategy in today’s business landscape. Read on to learn more about the benefits of using Twitter and why internet-conscious business owners should begin implementing strong Twitter strategies.

Twitter Has the Traffic

It’s a well-known internet axiom: “Go where the traffic is.” Every day, 3 million tweets are sent out on Twitter. Every month, over 8 million different people use Twitter; therefore, the enormous number of people using Twitter makes it a very strong platform to be on.

Twitter is a Multi-Purposed Business Tool

There are many different ways to use Twitter. Unlike other marketing tools which just have one use (e.g. AdWords = generate traffic), Twitter can be used for many things. It can be used to get new people into your funnel. People who have never heard of you will discover you and your products when someone retweets a tweet from you that they liked.

Twitter can also be used as a follow-up tool to existing customers. People who wouldn’t normally give away their email address would feel very comfortable following you on Twitter. Twitter can also be used as a PR rescue tool. If there is ever a PR emergency, such as a bad rumor circulating, it can be addressed instantaneously with Twitter instead of using other methods that take a lot longer.

Finally, Twitter’s search capabilities make it easy to see what other people are saying about your company, your market and your competitors. It can be a mighty powerful research tool.

That’s just a handful of the different ways to use Twitter. As you can see, it is a very powerful tool that can be used in many, many different ways.

Different People Have Different Communication Preferences

Your customers have a lot of choices in how they stay in touch with your company. They can just bookmark your website and come back when they want. They can give you their email address, follow your RSS, join your Facebook page, or follow you on Twitter.

The reality is that everyone has different preferences on how they wish to receive communications. There is a very large audience on the Internet that prefers Twitter over just about every other medium.

The idea isn’t to use Twitter to replace other mediums. The idea is to give your customers the medium they prefer. If they like Twitter and prefer to follow content through Twitter rather than other means, it is usually in your best interest to let them do so.

Twitter has the traffic, has many compelling business uses, and has a strong following of people who prefer to get updates via Twitter rather than any other means. These are three very powerful reasons why just about any business owner should seriously consider building a Twitter strategy for their business.

Learning Twitter can be somewhat intimidating at first. The community speaks its own lingo and interacts in a way that is completely different than Facebook or email.

Here is how you can get “Twitter savvy,” so you can jump in without making potentially embarrassing mistakes:

Learn the Shorthand

Twitter users (also known as “tweeters”) have their own language. The language is often necessitated because of Twitter’s character length limit. Because you only have 140 characters, you are more likely to say “PRT” than “Please retweet.” Twitter has a very comprehensive glossary you can view on their website to learn the various common words and phrases used by the Twitter community:

http://support.twitter.com/entries/166337-the-twitter-glossary

Learn How to Use Hashtags (#)

Hashtags are used primarily to identify messages on a certain topic. For instance, if you are running a sale and want people to be able to have discussions about your sale, you might tell anyone tweeting about your sale to tweet with #salomatic. Someone tweeting would then put #salomatic at the end of their tweet. Anyone seeing that tweet could just click that hashtag to see all messages tagged with #salomatic. This effectively instantly creates a chat room or message board of sorts.

Follow People in Your Industry

What should you post about, how often should you post, and what are topics people are interested in hearing about?
The best way to find out for yourself is to start following people in your industry. These could be competitors, customers or industry news channels. Basically, follow anyone that has a strong voice in your market. This way you will start to get a real sense of what your market is like and what conventions are in your market. You will get a sense of how often others post and what topics people tend to respond to.

Following, Being Followed, Posting Messages

The best way to learn your way around Twitter is to use it a lot. Before you start using Twitter on your business account, try using Twitter in your personal account. Start following your friends and ask your friends to follow you. Post tweets and watch your friends respond. Respond to your friends’ tweets.

Get used to how the whole system works. Once you have learned how to create topics with hashtags, the various common words and phrases, and how to follow, be followed and post messages, then you will be basically conversational in Twitter.

Once you are conversational in Twitter, the next step is just to dive in head first and start using Twitter a lot. Learning Twitter isn’t difficult, it just takes a bit of basic understanding and a lot of regular use. In just a few weeks, you can quickly become very Twitter savvy.

Twitter has the reputation for personal shares (“What I’m having for breakfast”), but that kind of Tweet is out of place for a business Twitter account. Here are a few tips to help you determine how personal you can be in your tweets.

Finding Your Brand

The first thing to think about is whether your brand is a personal brand or more of a corporate brand.

Your answer helps dictate your approach to how you use Twitter. To give a couple of examples from well-known airlines:

If Southwest Airlines or Virgin Atlantic were doing tweets, they’d want to do it in a very personal way because that is their corporate culture and their brand. Since they are known for going out of their way to connect with customers, that’s how they would tweet. However, if United Airlines or British Airways were too personal in their tweets, it just wouldn’t make sense as it goes against their brand; shareholders would start to doubt the management’s professionalism and their credibility would be damaged. Their brand is one of market dominance and corporate professionalism.

Take a look at your own brand and decide how you want customers to see you and how they expect you to behave.

It’s a Balance

The above examples are a good illustration of both extremes, but often times it’s not so cut and dry. In fact, most businesses will find themselves having to balance personal and professional tweets. If you’re a sole proprietor or a small company with fewer than 30 employees, then chances are you are going to have a lot of personal interactions with your customers. You’re not a faceless entity and your customers are likely going to want to get to know the human beings behind the computer screen and the tweets.

They also expect to be treated professionally and primarily want to relate to you in a business context. They want to know what’s going on with your services and your company, as well as how it relates to them. Therefore, you should not share with them what you had for breakfast, but it would be a good idea to share with them how excited your team is about your latest product launch.

Use your best judgment, using your brand and your customer relationship as a guideline. As a general rule, you will want to be personable while staying relevant. Avoid tweets that are clearly just personal, but also don’t come across as strictly commercial or corporate, unless that’s how your customers expect you to behave.

Twitter is becoming a huge asset in the business world. Both start-up businesses and Fortune 500 companies are recognizing the importance of using Twitter to stay in contact with customers. Here is how to eerffectively use Twitter for business:

Expand Your Reach

Having Twitter as an avenue to reach out to others is a powerful way to expand your reach. There are a lot of people who would click a Twitter “follow” button with much less hesitation than they would give out their email address. They want to follow your business, but they don’t necessarily want to be on another email list. In addition to people in your own network, you’ll also have access to all the people on Twitter. They will land on your website from direct searches, from retweets or from friends. It is a whole group of people you didn’t have access to before.

Market Research and Competition Research

Twitter is a great way to do market research and keep your eye on your competition to learn their latest developments. If your competitor has a Twitter account, you should be subscribed to it. In addition, pay attention to what your followers and the followers of everyone in your industry are saying. This will help you really keep your finger on the pulse of your industry.

Building Your Brand Actively

Rather than choosing a lot of logos and colors and sitting back hoping they will reflect positively on your brand, you can use Twitter to drive your brand actively. Using Twitter, you can regularly put out tweets about what is going on in your company, special promotions and other things that are relevant for your customers. You’ll also be able to handle customer complaints quickly. You’ll be able to resolve them, or at least mitigate the damage quickly if you are on Twitter.

Increasing Sales with Twitter

Twitter can be an incredibly powerful way to drive sales. Remember that your Twitter followers are loyal consumers who have signed up to follow your tweets because they like what your business is about.

Twitter gives business owners an opportunity to sell that simply isn’t available with email or Facebook. That opportunity comes from the frequency of contact.

It is frowned upon to email a consumer several times a week. With Twitter, however, you can tweet several times a day without breaking consumer trust. Things like a countdown to a product launch, reminders about a freebie giveaway, or up-to-the-minute updates on a contest would never be acceptable by email, but are welcomed on Twitter.

Using Twitter for business can make a big difference on your brand, your customer relationships and your bottom line.